Arena Blog

Arena Customers Shine at CES 2016

More than 3,800 exhibitors unveiled their latest technologies across more than 2.47 million net square feet of exhibit space at CES 2016. The International Consumer Electronics show touched every major global industry and showcased the latest wave of electronics that are connecting the world, enhancing lives and solving global challenges. More than 170,000 electronic industry pros, with 50,000 from outside the U.S., attended the event highlighting the ever-changing global technology space.

From automotive technology and unmanned systems to wearables, the breadth and depth of innovation on display at CES was unparalleled and expanding in particular machine to machine communication. “You see so many important trends at CES,” said David Hagan, chairman and CEO, Boingo Wireless. “This week we saw that devices are no longer just connecting to the Internet, they are increasingly connected to each other.”

Arena customer Fitbit CEO and Co-Founder James Park delivered the evening’s keynote address as a discussion with CTA President and CEO Gary Shapiro. Now a global brand providing fitness solutions to consumers around the world, Park noted how far Fitbit and fitness tech have come. “We essentially had to create the health and fitness category in 2009,” said Park. “I remember talking to Best Buy, and they didn't even have a section to display it." Fitbit unveiled its Fitbit Blaze at CES Press Day. The smart fitness watch creates a digital health platform - hardware and software - to help people reach their health goals. “People really want to work for a company that is mission-oriented,” Park noted. “And they want to work for a company that has profound benefits in society.”

Another long time Arena customer, GoPro, was the talk of analysts when CEO Nick Woodman gave a keynote presentation (click here to watch video) hinting at the company’s plans to release a “more casual” spherical camera and drone camera soon.

The conference focused quite a bit of attention on the IoT industry. At the conference leading industry service providers and manufacturers stressed the importance of strategic partnerships to accelerate the development of IoT. This revolution has driven companies to move toward open source and standards to provide faster and better solutions to consumers.

In the film “Top Gun,” when Maverick declared to his BFF Goose that he had “a need for speed,” he echoed the sentiments of every IoT company racing to market to beat the competition. And every IoT executive agreed at CES that waiting months for an on-premise design solution to be implemented would be a suicide mission. It’s all about time to market. To be a ‘first mover’ you’ve got to move—and you’ve got to move fast.

To ensure this ‘first mover’ advantage in a highly competitive industry, more and more IoT consumer electronics companies rely on a cloud-based product lifecycle management (PLM) solution to innovate while accelerating time to market.

A critical advantage of cloud PLM systems for IoT companies is that the solutions are maintained by the provider, which means setup is easy and, most importantly, fast. And the ultimate multi-tenant SaaS scalability and flexibility to add and subtract licenses and modules is key to becoming short-listed. On-premise PLM, on the other hand, has an expensive and time-intensive integration process, which requires software licenses and a significant upfront infrastructure investment.

To learn more how Arena PLM helps some of the most innovative companies in the world – and those often highlighted at CES – click here. With Arena PLM, your company could be the next CES darling.